The invention relates to a product design tradeoff method. An existing design methodology for improving product quality is the design for six sigma (DFSS) process. One component of DFSS is the development of transfer functions to represent the response surface of the design space of interest. A transfer function may represent the product at a variety of levels (e.g. component, sub-assembly, assembly, entire product, etc.). There are various tools to create transfer functions from a DOE (Design of Experiments) using regression methods, but there is a need for further developing and optimizing transfer functions.
An exemplary embodiment of the invention is directed to a product design tradeoff method. A transfer function, which generates an (meaning at least one) output in response to an (meaning at least one) input is obtained. A type of optimization to be performed is identified and the input to the transfer function is perturbed in order to achieve the type of optimization identified. Output information representing the output of the transfer function is generated to provide the user with the result of the optimization. Generating the output information comprises generating a sensitivity matrix. The sensitivity matrix comprises a plurality of sensitivity values that indicates a relationship between a change in input versus a change in output, wherein each of the sensitivity values provides a corresponding numerical value for comparing an effect of the change in the input versus the change in the output.